As summer heatwaves rise, millions of Americans, particularly those in low-income households, face severe power shortages.
Federal regulators now warn that aging power plants, insufficient electricity generation, and a dangerously rapid transition to unreliable wind and solar are creating America’s most severe threat of blackouts in recent memory.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has issued a dire warning in its annual summer assessment: approximately 104 million Americans – one in three – face elevated risks of power shortfalls this summer.
The threat spans from the upper Midwest to the Gulf Coast, with 89 million people accessing three central US grids now classified as high-risk zones.
The shutdown of reliable coal and natural gas power plants, replaced with weather-dependent wind and solar energy, has weakened America’s power infrastructure precisely when Americans need it most.
Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of reliability assessments, admitted, “Going in the summer, the grid operators need to be prepared for the potential conditions to be stressful once again.”
The crisis is made worse by rapidly increasing demand from AI data centers and electric vehicles, paired with extreme weather patterns.
Even worse, Americans will pay more for less reliable service – energy bills are expected to rise by almost 9% from June to September, with average costs hitting $719 per household.
Mark Wolfe, author of the report and executive director of Neada, stated:
“Our current strategies, including access to cooling centers, may have been appropriate when they were designed in the 1970s when summer temperatures were lower and heatwaves were sporadic. They are inadequate to provide relief from the record-breaking high temperatures and continuous heatwaves that have become our new normal in the summer months.”
Particularly concerning is that nearly half of Americans live in states that lack basic protections against power disconnections during heatwaves.
Only 19 states and Washington, D.C., have mandated summer shut-off protections, leaving 203 million citizens vulnerable.
The elderly and children are disproportionately affected, with nearly half living in states without summer shut-off restrictions.
The past administration’s radical climate agenda has accelerated the closure of reliable coal and nuclear plants while forcing dependency on unreliable wind and solar.
Even Texas, which has invested heavily in its grid after previous failures, faces risks from transmission bottlenecks, though it has added 7.5 gigawatts of battery power to help stabilize its system.
Furthermore, federal assistance programs that could help vulnerable Americans have been gutted under Biden’s watch.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) has been cut by $2 billion, affecting approximately 1 million fewer households this year.
The New England grid, which covers six states, also faces significant risk due to tight energy supplies.
Both the New York system and the 13-state eastern US grid have warned of possible reserve shortfalls during extreme summer heat.
This means that millions of hardworking Americans could find themselves without power during the hottest days of summer, with potentially deadly consequences.
The most financially vulnerable citizens, including 45 million people with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, are at the highest risk of struggling with rising energy costs and potential disconnections.
Meanwhile, the percentage of households with children unable to pay energy bills for at least one month has increased from 29.3% to 32.4%.
Amid these warnings, heat safety advocates argue that energy assistance funding must be increased to cope with today’s new climate challenges.
